


Like a Building Fell on Him

by LiraelClayr007



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Deaf Clint Barton, Fluff, Hurt Clint Barton, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Steve meddles, but not actually hurt at all, he's in medical again, just a bit, mention of a child in danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 07:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiraelClayr007/pseuds/LiraelClayr007
Summary: Clint is injured on a mission when Natasha is away, so Bucky stays with Clint in medical, to be there when he wakes up. He can't figure out why seeing Clint injured is having such an effect on him, or why he gets so angry when he finds out how Clint risked his life.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 26
Kudos: 182





	Like a Building Fell on Him

Pacing is not easy in a hospital room, even in the oversized versions they have in the Tower, but Bucky manages to do it anyway. He’d started out sitting in the chair by the bed, but that had lasted about four minutes. He couldn’t sit still.

Clint is still enough for both of them.

How had this happened? No one could tell Bucky. No one had been there to see. Bucky had been on the other side of the building, dealing with some sort of robots. Tony thought they’d been remotely controlled, but they’d been enough of a pain in the ass, no matter if they’d been AI or not. Bucky and Steve had been knocked around plenty...but neither one of them ended up in a hospital bed.

Clint though… He’s got a bandage wrapped around his head, although the nurse who keeps coming in to check on him keeps reassuring Bucky that there is no concussion. The “this time” isn’t spoken, but is evident in her pursed lips. He’s got a bruise under his right eye, his right arm is broken, he’s got several cracked ribs, and his right ankle is broken too.

And there are so many cuts and scrapes. He looks like a building fell on him.

Which, of course, is exactly what had happened.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor if you keep pacing like that,” Steve says from the doorway.

“Are you kidding? Have you ever heard one of Tony’s ‘superior materials’ lectures? Even I couldn’t damage this floor just by walking on it. Not in a single afternoon, at least.”

Steve stops his restless pacing with a hand clasp to the shoulder. “You really should get some rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t, Buck. But he’s got good doctors and nurses to take care of him. It’s hardly your responsibility--”

“I promised Natasha I’d have his back while she was gone.” There’s a hollow quality to his voice, even he can hear it.

“Bucky. This wasn’t your fault.” 

Bucky waves him off. “I know. But I can at least be here when he wakes up. Nat would be, if she was here.”

Without a word, Steve walks out of the room. Bucky looks through the empty doorway, surprised. But he shouldn’t have been. In three minutes Steve is back, carrying another chair and a deck of cards. “You can at least let me keep you company for awhile.”

Bucky is asleep in the chair when Clint wakes up.

“Bucky? ’ssat you?”

Clint’s voice is weak and his words slur together, but he’s definitely awake.

“Hey.” Bucky’s voice is rough as gravel, sticky with sleep. “Hey, Barton. Was starting to worry. Too much beauty sleep and you might beat me out in the next Prettiest Avenger competition.”

Clint starts to smile, then grimaces. “Fuck, tha’ hurs. Ow. It all hurs.”

“Shh, don’t try to move, alright? I talked to the doctor, you’re going to be fine. You just need time to heal.” He’s already pushing the call button when he says, “I’ll get a nurse to give you some more pain meds and you can go back to sleep.”

The smile starts to creep across Clint’s features again but Bucky holds up a finger. “None of that. You can do all the smiling you want in a day or so. For now, just rest.”

“You gon’ ssay?”

Clint’s looking up at him like a puppy waiting for a scratch behind the ears. Something flutters in Bucky’s chest, and he suddenly wonders why Natasha asked him in particular to have Clint’s back.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and Clint’s face relaxes into an easy smile. Bucky’s not sure if it’s his answer or the pain meds the nurse just pushed into his iv, but Clint looks genuinely happy. The pain meds seem to be working, anyway, if he can smile without pain. “Yeah, I’ll stay,” he says. “Just go to sleep.”

Clint nods, his face solemn once again. Then he yawns, says, “I nee’ta sleep now. An’ you ‘ave pretty eyes. Like ’em.”

Bucky just stares, unsure how to react to that. He keeps thinking, _Yeah, but so do you_ , but he’s not sure if he can just _say_ that. In the end it doesn’t matter; while Bucky is arguing with himself, Clint drifts back to sleep.

The next time Clint wakes up he’s a bit more coherent, but not much.

“Nat?” he says. Then slightly more frantic, “ _Nat_? I can’t--”

Bucky tries not to startle him, but he’s got to get his attention somehow and obviously talking won’t do it. He takes Clint’s grasping hand as gently as he can, but the man still jumps and tries to pull away.

Understandable.

But Bucky doesn’t let go. He carefully unfolds Clint’s fingers and drops the aids into his palm. Making sure Clint is looking at him he says and signs at the same time, “I took them out after you fell asleep. Figured it was probably more comfortable.”

Clint nods, then slips the aids into place. He winces at the pain on the right side of his head but doesn’t make a sound of complaint.

“Where’s Nat?” he asks.

“On a mission. Has been since last week. You don’t have a concussion, it must just be the drugs muddling your thoughts.”

He nods, grimacing again. “Yeah. Brain isn’t too clear.”

“How’s the pain?”

“I’ve had worse.”

Bucky rolls his eyes at the non-answer.

“What’re you doing here?”

Bucky shrugs. “Drew the short straw.”

Clint’s eyes flutter closed before Bucky can parse out the look he sees in them.

He stands up to start pacing again--this room is just too small--when he hears a whispered, “Thanks,” from the bed.

“Anytime,” he says, but Clint is already asleep.

“You’re still here? I thought you guys worked in shifts or something.”

Bucky looks up from his book, a smile on his face. “Nah. They all figured I don’t need much sleep, so I got the full time job,” he says as well as signs.

Before Clint can ask he sweeps the aids from the bedside table and sets them in his open palm. Clint’s look is thankful and genuine.

“Feeling better?”

Clint shifts his body around on the bed, trying out various muscles and body parts. “Still hurts, but it’s better. Head’s not pounding quite so bad.” He lifts his right arm and glares at the cast. “Fuck. I _hate_ when I hurt my arms. Messes with my practice schedule for weeks.”

Suddenly every worry, every frustration Bucky’s had for the past twenty or so hours bubbles to the surface. “ _That’s_ what you’re worrying about? What the hell were you doing down there anyway, Barton? That area had been swept and cleared. None of those weird robots, no threats at all. And we were both on the same comm link. You knew as well as I did that the building was unstable. We were all warned away from there. What the hell came over you?”

Clint recoils a bit at the force of Bucky’s words, surprise on his face. “There was--”

“This had better not be an excuse.” Bucky’s voice is tight, cold. He’s not sure why everything’s coming out as anger.

Clint looks Bucky square in the eyes. “There was a kid down there. A little girl.”

“A kid.” It comes out of Bucky in a whoosh, like he’d been punched in the gut. “Is she...did you save her?”

And then Clint has the nerve to fucking _grin_. “Look at me, Barnes. I used my body to shield a kid from a falling wall. Pretty sure I’d look better than this if I’d just let her get hurt.” Seeing Bucky’s glare, he softens his look and his tone. “She’s fine. I took the brunt of the debris. She had a few scrapes, and I may have bruised her when I grabbed her and braced myself over top of her, but she was okay enough to run for help after everything finished falling. Though she may have just gone home, she was plenty scared. She was only nine or ten. What was she doing out on that street alone anyway?” He stares somewhere past Bucky’s shoulder, lost in thought.

“Barton!” Clint’s eyes snap back to Bucky’s. “Have you lost your damn mind? You jumped in front of a falling building. You could have _died_!” Bucky doesn’t understand why he’s so angry, why he’s yelling at Clint for saving a child’s life. Of course it had been the right thing to do. But still he keeps going. “Did you think at all? Did you even consider--”

He sees Clint’s eyes then, surprised and hurt and confused.

And then he can’t be confined in the hospital room any longer. There’s nothing to say to salvage the mess he’s made, so he just closes his mouth and storms out.

Clint spends the rest of the day trying to sweet-talk the nurses into letting him leave. Unfortunately, after all his escape attempts, successful and otherwise, they’re on alert and immune to his charms. They bring him a crutch when he needs the bathroom but are careful to take it when they leave, and he’s not getting far on a broken ankle. Not without help.

So when Steve shows up after dinner he thinks maybe his white knight has arrived. He grins and says, “You here to bust me out of here?”

“Sorry,” Steve says. “I brought you coffee, though.”

“Coffee,” Clint says, holding the cup under his nose and breathing in the scent. Those are not tears in his eyes. His eyes are watering from the steam.

They sit together for a few minutes, the only sounds the soft noises of the hospital machines and Clint sipping his coffee. After a bit Steve says, “He didn’t leave this room the whole time you were unconscious.”

Clint doesn’t say anything.

“He says it was because Natasha asked him to watch your back, that she would have stayed if she’d been here.” He gives Clint a long look. “I don’t think that was it, though. At least, not entirely.”

Still Clint just waits, unsure what Steve is getting at.

“You really scared him,” Steve says. “More than he expected. More than he understands.”

Clint swallows.

Steve looks at him, his gaze level. “Do _you_ understand?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. His voice is unexpectedly rough. “Yeah, I think I do.”

Relaxing a bit, Steve says, “Good.” Then he smiles conspiratorially. “Wanna get out of here?”

When Bucky hears the knock he glares at the door. “Go away, Stevie,” he growls. “I’m not in the mood for your lecture. I’m not going back down to medical and nothing you say will change my--”

Even though he tells him to go away, he opens the door. Because it’s Steve, and they’ve been friends for too long.

Only it’s not Steve standing outside the door. It’s Clint.

So he trails off mid-thought, and finishes the only way he possibly can. “Fuck.”

And there’s that grin again. “I thought maybe we could just talk,” Clint says. “And maybe I could sit down? I snuck out of medical--”

“Again? Dammit Barton--”

“Don’t start yelling at me again, Barnes. Just let me in and give me a place to sit. And maybe some coffee?”

Bucky makes a show of looking at the clock on the wall. “It’s almost eight at night. I am not giving you caffeine.”

The face Clint makes almost changes Bucky’s mind. Almost. Instead he says, “Water. Or juice.”

Clint makes another tragic face, but says, “Water please.”

Bucky turns and walks into the apartment. After two steps he hears a crash behind him.

Clint is a tumbled mess on the floor just inside the doorway. “A little help?” He looks up at Bucky, a smile on his lips but pain in his eyes. “When Steve busted me out he forgot the crutches.”

Laugh or scream? Honestly, it could go either way.

Instead, Bucky growls, “You should be in that hospital bed.” But he belies his words by gently scooping Clint into his arms.

“Hey, I can walk,” he squawks.

“Yeah, you did real well with that. Just shut up and let me carry you.”

He shuts up.

After Bucky deposits Clint (softly, even though part of him wants to drop him, because he fucking deserves it) on the sofa he goes to the kitchen for some water. When he comes back Clint is smiling at him--that laid back, easy smile--and Bucky nearly dumps the contents of both glasses onto his smiling face. But again he controls himself, and silently hands Clint his glass. Clint takes a drink, dramatically sighs at the “not coffee-ness” of the water, then looks up at Bucky.

“Aren’t you going to sit down? My neck is going to hurt worse than it already does if I have to look up at you looming over me.”

Bucky sits down on the far end of the sofa. “You should still be in medical,” he says.

“You’ve already made your feelings on that pretty clear,” Clint says. “But Steve and I thought this was more important.”

“Steve. Always meddling,” Bucky mutters.

“Sounds like Nat,” Clint says. Bucky can’t tell if he’s laughing or commiserating.

There is about a minute of uncomfortable silence. Uncomfortable on Bucky’s end, anyway. He won’t even let himself look at Clint. He doesn’t want to start yelling at him again. Yelling at him when he wants to be…

But that’s the problem. He’s too muddled around those clear, bright eyes that see so sharply and that always smiling mouth and…

_Oh._

And then Clint interrupts his racing thoughts. “Steve told me--” He stops, abruptly. “No, that’s not what I want to say. Can I start over?”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice broken and strained.

“I’m always gonna jump in front of a wall to save a kid. Or anyone who needs saving, really. It’s what I do. It’s what you do too, right?”

Bucky grunts. He wants to say that he’s got accelerated healing and other enhancements, but he knows this isn’t the time. He just listens.

“But...maybe next time I’ll call for backup first. Or at least call in to let everyone know what’s going on. If, ah, if there’s someone on the other end who wants to know.”

His mouth suddenly dry, Bucky takes a drink of his water before trying to speak. “There is,” he says. He finally lets himself look at Clint. The easy grin is gone, replaced by a look so open and genuine it almost frightens Bucky.

“I didn’t realize,” Clint says.

“Neither did I,” says Bucky.

Without taking his eyes from Clint’s, Bucky takes both glasses and puts them on the coffee table.

He scoots across the sofa, angled towards Clint, close enough that they’re almost touching.

“The first time you woke up, when you were really gone on painkillers, you told me I have pretty eyes.”

Clint reaches up with his not-injured arm and tucks Bucky’s hair behind his ear. “You do. I don’t remember saying it before, but you do.” His hand continues on through Bucky’s hair, and he grips the back of Bucky’s head, pulling him closer. When their mouths are just a breath apart, he says, “Okay, Buck?”

Bucky’s brain, his body, his every nerve ending, is screaming yes. His traitor mouth says, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

And then Clint is laughing again, and Bucky is falling. Not physically--his body is still on the sofa--but his heart flips over and his stomach lurches and he knows before their lips even touch that he is well and truly _gone_ for Clint Barton. “I don’t remember injuring my _mouth_ , Bucky. We’ll just have to save anything more strenuous for later.” And then he fucking _winks_. But before Bucky can say anything about it their mouths are pressed together and every other thought disappears, because oh, this is what he’s been missing.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this one got away from me a bit. But my new BDBD friends kept egging me on*...y'all know who you are.
> 
> *yes, this is generally known as "encouragement." I stand by my phrasing. ;)


End file.
